Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Between Perception
and Action
Bence Nanay
1
3
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To Felicitas
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1. Introduction 1
1.1 The icing and the cake 1
1.2 Pragmatic representations 3
1.3 Product differentiation 7
2. Pragmatic Representations 13
2.1 Mediating between sensory input and motor output 13
2.2 The immediate mental antecedents of actions 15
2.3 The direction of fit 19
2.4 Pragmatic representations are perceptual states 21
2.5 The argument 23
2.6 Potential counterexamples 28
2.7 Pragmatic representations everywhere 31
3. Perception 33
3.1 Are there perceptual representations at all? 33
3.2 Perceptually attributed properties 36
3.3 Sensory individuals 49
3.4 Pragmatic representations and the dorsal visual subsystem 62
4. Action 67
4.1 Belief–desire psychology and its discontents 67
4.2 Naturalizing action theory 75
4.3 Semi-actions 81
4.4 The last refuge of the belief–desire model 86
5. Pragmatic Mental Imagery 102
5.1 Mental imagery 102
5.2 Mental imagery versus perception 105
5.3 Pragmatic mental imagery 111
5.4 Pretense 115
5.5 Aliefs 121
viii contents
References 168
Index 201
Acknowledgements
This book is about perception, action, and what’s in between. It’s about
the whole mind, in other words. It is written for philosophers, but not
only for philosophers: it is also for psychologists or other empirical
researchers of the mind with theoretical interests, as well as people
who are just interested in understanding how the human mind works
and how it is very similar to animal minds.
I started exploring the central claims of this book almost 20 years ago.
As far as my philosophical attention deficit disorder allowed, I have been
pursuing these claims ever since. In 1995, I published a very bad paper in
a psychology journal on how we should reject Gibson’s views about
perception while preserving the insight about the action-oriented nature
of perception. Then I wrote a still pretty bad MPhil thesis at Cambridge
University on the “special” mental states that mediate between sensory
input and motor output, and then an only slightly better PhD at the
University of California, Berkeley on action-oriented perception. I am
grateful to my various teachers and colleagues throughout these years
(and admire their patience) for not discouraging me from pursuing this
project, given how unconvincing some of my arguments really were. The
hope is that the arguments in this book are much more convincing.
Given that I have been talking to philosophers, psychologists, etholo-
gists, and neuroscientists about the topic of this book for nearly 20 years,
there is no way I can remember everyone who helped me with thinking
more clearly about the topic of the book, or even provided written com-
ments on earlier written-up versions of some of the ideas in the book. So
I won’t even try—if I tried, I would, no doubt, leave out many people. But
I am especially grateful to those who read the whole penultimate version of
the manuscript and provided detailed feedback: Jonathan Cohen, two
anonymous referees from Oxford University Press, and my postdocs,
Maja Spener, Carolyn Dicey Jennings, Will Davies, and Craig French.
Various parts of the book were presented at the following symposia,
conferences, and workshops: American Philosophical Association,
Pacific Division (San Diego), Annual Conference of the Cognitive
Science Society (Vancouver), American Philosophical Association,
x acknowledgements
we should try to understand the cake without worrying too much about
the icing. In other words, the right methodology for philosophy of
mind is to understand those simple mental capacities that we share
with animals first, and then explain those uniquely human, highly
intellectual mental capacities that make the human mind so remarkable.
It is important that I am not suggesting that the human mind is to be
understood as the animal mind plus some extra features—imagine
instead a cake where the icing nicely seeps into the dough. But if we
want to understand the human mind, we need to start with the simplest
mental capacities and work our way towards the more complex ones.
To stretch the cake analogy even further, the aim of this book is
to identify what could be described as the main ingredients of this
cake. The basic units of our linguistic, higher order mental processes
are conceptually/linguistically structured propositional attitudes: beliefs,
desires, thoughts. But we have no reason to suppose that the basic units
of those simple mental capacities that we share with animals would also
be such propositional attitudes. In fact, the point could be made that
when we describe the human mind as consisting of beliefs and desires,
we are mirroring language. The basic units of language are sentences or
utterances that express propositions; thus, it would be tempting to say
that the basic units of our mind must be mental states that also express
propositions: propositional attitudes. But if we maintain that our under-
standing of the human mind is not to be modeled on language or even on
uniquely human linguistic thoughts, then we have no reason to accept
that beliefs and desires are the basic building blocks of the human mind.
The need to look for new candidates to replace beliefs and desires
as the basic building blocks of the human mind is not new. Gareth Evans,
for example, suggested that we should consider information-carrying
states to be the basic units instead (Evans 1982). I would like to make
a more specific proposal. My claim is that the vast majority of what
is going on in the human mind can be understood if we consider
what I call “pragmatic representations” to be the basic units of our
mental capacities.
The human mind, like the minds of non-human animals, has been
selected for allowing us to perform actions successfully. And the vast
majority of our actions, like the actions of non-human animals, could not
be performed without perceptual guidance. My claim is that the mental
state that mediates between sensory input and motor output is the basic
introduction 3
building block of the human mind. I call mental states of this kind
pragmatic representations.
know what force you need to exert when lifting it. I call these properties
“action-properties”: action-properties are properties that need to be
represented in order for the agent to perform the action. Pragmatic
representations attribute action-properties: they represent objects in an
action-oriented manner (Nanay 2011a, 2011b, 2012a). And they typically
attribute these action-properties unconsciously.
As pragmatic representations are supposed to play an important role
in action, and as they are supposed to be perceptual states, if we accept
that pragmatic representations are crucial for understanding our mental
life then this will have radical consequences both for debates in philoso-
phy of perception and for debates in philosophy of action.
Let us take philosophy of perception first. Pragmatic representations
are bona fide perceptual states. It is an important question in the
philosophy of perception what properties we perceive objects as having.
Shape, size, and color are obvious candidates. It is much less clear
whether we represent sortal properties perceptually: whether we literally
see objects as chairs and tables and not just infer that they are. I argue
that we sometimes also perceive objects as having action-properties.
This should not sound particularly surprising. Our (extremely com-
plex) perceptual system was selected for helping us to perform actions on
which our survival depended. It is hardly surprising, then, that it was
selected for representing objects as having properties that are relevant to
the performance of our actions: as having action-properties. As Tyler
Burge says, “since perception guides action, it is not surprising that
perceptual kinds mesh with [our] activities” (Burge 2010, p. 324).
Importantly, my claim is that we perceive objects as having action-
properties some of the time, not that we always do so. Pragmatic re-
presentations are perceptual states, but not all perceptual states are
pragmatic representations. Very often we perceive objects in a way that
is not action-oriented—for example, when we are admiring the land-
scape, sitting on a bench, in a detached manner, without any urge to
perform any action at all.
Now let us see the relevance of pragmatic representations for the
philosophy of action. One of the most important questions of philosophy
of action is this: what makes actions actions? How do actions differ from
mere bodily movements? The difference is some kind of mental state that
triggers, guides, or maybe accompanies the bodily movement. But what
is this mental state?
introduction 5
it can be argued that all experiments that are supposed to show that non-
human primates have theory of mind in fact demonstrate that they are
capable of vicarious perception. The same goes for the experiments with
infants less than 12 months old. If we shift the emphasis from theory of
mind to vicarious perception, we can make real advances in understand-
ing the origins of social cognition.
DESIRE
MOTOR
SENSORY INTENTION OUTPUT
INPUT BELIEF
Figure 1 Computationalism/propositionalism
8 between perception and action
SENSORY MOTOR
INPUT OUTPUT
Figure 2 Anti-representationalism/enactivism
introduction 9
I think that this is a mistake, and that rejecting talk of mental repre-
sentations altogether because of the justified mistrust of a specific kind of
representation—namely, conceptually/linguistically structured propos-
itional attitudes—is a bit like pouring out the baby with the bathwater.
These kinds of propositional attitudes are not the only kind of represen-
tations. My view is that the mind is to be understood in terms of
representations, but that these representations are not conceptually or
linguistically structured, nor are they uniquely human. They are better
compared to the mental representations of the predator that make it
possible for it to catch its prey. These representations are perceptual
representations and inherently action-oriented (see Figure 3).
1
Theories of “agent causation” deny this, and claim that what distinguishes actions and
bodily movements is that the former are caused by the agent herself (and not a specific
mental state of her). I leave these accounts aside because of the various criticisms of the very
idea of agent causation (see Pereboom 2004 for a summary).
2
This list is supposed to be representative, not complete. Another important concept
that may also be listed here is John Perry’s concept of “belief-how” (Israel et al. 1993, Perry
2001, see also Grush 2004, Hommel et al. 2001, Norman 2002). Also, there are important
differences between these accounts of what makes actions actions—I will say more about
these in Chapter 3 (see especially Section 3.2).
16 between perception and action
3
This distinction between the cognitive and the conative components of the immediate
mental antecedents of action is not entirely uncontroversial. I will discuss potential reasons
against it in Section 2.3, as well as in Chapter 4.
18 between perception and action
action (that one should come to eat dinner). Millikan generalizes this
account of Pushmi-Pullyu representations to mental representations.
What Andy Clark calls “action-oriented representation,” and what Jean-
nerod and Jacob call “visuo-motor representation,” also have this double
direction of fit (see especially Clark 1997, p. 50, Jacob and Jeannerod
2003, pp. 38, 204).4
I want to resist this move. I think it is problematic to talk about a
perceptual state that prescribes what we should do (see more on this in
Chapter 3). Further, I do not see any real reason for attributing “world
to mind” direction of fit to pragmatic representations. We have seen
that desires and intentions have a “world to mind” direction of fit.
But pragmatic representations are neither desires nor intentions. Let
me clarify.
Recall the distinction between the cognitive and the conative compon-
ents of the immediate mental antecedent of action: the cognitive com-
ponent represents the world, whereas the conative one moves us to act.
As long as we make a distinction between these two components of the
immediate mental antecedents of action, there is no reason why the
representational component (what Brand calls the “cognitive” compon-
ent) would need to have a “world to mind” direction of fit. The “cona-
tive” component moves us to act, and the representational component
tells us how the world is in such a way that would help us to perform this
movement. But are we entitled to make this distinction?
The advocates of the Pushmi-Pullyu approach could follow one of the
following two strategies, in order to question this distinction between
4
Pete Mandik’s position is somewhat different from the others on this list. He claims
that “even representations with only imperative content [that is, ‘world to mind’ direction
of fit] are action-oriented representations” (Mandik 2005, Footnote 7). My view could be
considered to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from Mandik’s: while many propon-
ents of the idea that action-oriented representations mediate between sensory input and
motor output argue that these representations have both “mind to world” and “world to
mind” direction of fit, Mandik claims that they can have only the latter. I claim they have
only the former. Another philosopher who is difficult to characterize in this respect is
Michael Wheeler (see Wheeler 2005, especially pp. 197–9). Sometimes he seems to take the
“action-specific, egocentric, context-dependent” representations he is focusing on to
describe how the world is: “how the world is is itself encoded in terms of possibilities for
action” (Wheeler 2005, p. 197). But other times, he seems to take them to prescribe actions:
“what is represented here is [ . . . ] knowledge of how to negotiate the environment, given a
peculiar context of activity” (Wheeler 2005, p. 198). Maybe the most charitable interpret-
ation is to treat these representations to have both directions of fit.
pragmatic representations 21
5
This proposal is not entirely new. Kent Bach (Bach 1978, p. 368), for example, claims,
without argument, that one of the two components of the immediate mental antecedent of
action (receptive representation) is perceptual, whereas the other component (effective
representation) is “sensuous.” See also my Nanay 2012a and 2011a, where I explicitly
argued for a version of this claim, using different arguments.
22 between perception and action
6
A further worry about these intuitive considerations is that the chasing of the mosquito
could be thought to be a special kind of action, which is very different from other kinds of
actions: for example, ballistic actions where there is no perceptual feedback at all. Hence, we
should not generalize from the mosquito example to actions per se. I’ll say more about
ballistic actions in Section 2.6.
pragmatic representations 23
7
This interactive demonstration can be found in a number of science exhibitions. I first
saw it at the San Francisco Exploratorium. See also Held 1965 for the same phenomenon in
an experimental context.
24 between perception and action
basket, but at the end they can. Their pragmatic representations change
during this process, and it is this change that allows the participants to
perform the action successfully at the end of the process. The mental
state that guides their action at the end of the process does so much more
efficiently than the one that guides their action at the beginning. Prag-
matic representations represent the spatial location properties, the re-
presentation of which allows us to throw the ball. At the beginning of this
process, they represent these properties incorrectly; at the end, they do so
more or less correctly.
And here the proponents of the idea that pragmatic representations
are non-perceptual states encounter a problem. Neither one’s perceptual
experience nor one’s perceptual beliefs change in the course of this
perceptual learning process. Background beliefs do not change either.
The subjects experience the basket in front of them the entire time.
Further, they have the same beliefs about the basket and its whereabouts
all along. Still, their pragmatic representations do change.
The proponents of the idea that pragmatic representations are non-
perceptual states are committed to the following picture. The pragmatic
representation that guides this action is a non-perceptual state, call it
NP. NP is based (partly) on one’s perceptual state, P. Thus, the propon-
ents of the idea that pragmatic representations are non-perceptual states
need to explain this perceptual learning process in one of the following
three ways, none of which would be particularly promising.
First, they can insist that NP is based entirely on P. In this case we get a
flat contradiction, as while NP changes in this scenario, P, as we have
seen, does not change. But if this is so, then NP cannot be based only on
P—otherwise we reach a contradiction.
Second, they can point out, rightly, that we form NP only partially on
the basis of P, and there are other non-perceptual states and background
beliefs that also play a role in forming NP. But note that neither our
background beliefs8 nor our other (conscious) non-perceptual states
8
One may wonder about whether background beliefs do remain the same. I certainly
have acquired a belief after the first failed attempt; namely, the belief that I have just failed.
Doesn’t this count as a change in my background beliefs? Note that this change happens
after the first failed attempt, which does not change the accuracy of my action: the second
attempt normally fails just as miserably as the first. So although this is a change in my
beliefs, this change cannot be construed as underlying the change in my pragmatic
representation—which comes much later, after many more attempts.
pragmatic representations 25
change in this scenario: if neither P nor any other conscious mental states
NP are supposed to be based on change, then it is difficult to explain why
NP changes.
This takes us to the third option that is open to the proponents of the
non-perceptual account of pragmatic representations. They could say
that while our conscious perceptual states do not change, we have no
reason to suppose that our non-conscious perceptual states do not
change either. Maybe they do. In this case, besides the conscious percep-
tual state, P (that doesn’t change), there is another perceptual state, call
it P*, that is non-conscious and that, like NP, does change in the course
of this process. The problem with this suggestion is that in this case, both
P* and, presumably, NP would be unconscious representations of
the subject. And we need to be careful about when we attribute uncon-
scious mental states to agents. We have a clear and conclusive reason for
attributing the pragmatic representation: the agent’s behavior cannot be
explained without attributing a representation of the basket’s location
that guides her action. But it is difficult to see what reason we have
for attributing two unconscious representations to the agent besides
salvaging the non-perceptual account.
The same objection applies in the case of yet another potential way of
defending the non-perceptual account: namely, by arguing that while
P does not change and NP changes, this does not pose any problem
because there is another (non-conscious and non-perceptual) state that
NP is partly based on, call it NP*, that does change. And this change
escapes our attention because NP* is unconscious. The problem with
this suggestion is the same as above: we have no non-ad-hoc reason to
postulate yet another unconscious representation (perceptual or non-
perceptual) in order to describe the agent’s behavior and experience.
To sum up, none of the ways in which the non-perceptual account of
pragmatic representations can explain the perceptual learning phenom-
enon proves to be satisfying—they either lead to straight contradiction or
to the ad-hoc postulation of mental states. We are better off taking
pragmatic representations to be perceptual states.
A possible final line of defense for the proponents of the non-
perceptual account of pragmatic representation would be to say that
the goggles/basketball scenario is unusual and we should not use
it to draw general conclusions concerning the nature of the mental
antecedents of actions. The problem with this response is that there
26 between perception and action
9
I will focus on the three-dimensional Ebbinghaus illusion because of the simplicity of
the results, but it needs to be noted that the experimental conditions of this experiment have
been criticized recently. The main line of criticism is that the experimental designs of the
grasping experiment and the perceptual judgment experiment are very different. When the
subjects grasp the middle chip, there is only one middle chip surrounded by either smaller
or larger chips. When they are judging the size of the middle chip, however, they are
comparing two chips—one surrounded by smaller chips, the other by larger ones (Pavani
et al. 1999, Franz 2001, 2003, Franz et al. 2000, 2003, see also Gillam 1998, Vishton 2004
and Vishton and Fabre 2003, but see Haffenden and Goodale 1998 and Haffenden et al.
2001 for a response). See Briscoe 2008 for a good philosophically sensitive overview of this
question. I focus on the three-dimensional Ebbinghaus experiment in spite of these worries,
but those who are moved by Franz et al.’s style considerations can substitute some other
visual illusion; namely, the Müller-Lyer illusion, the Ponzo illusion, the hollow face illusion,
or the Kanizsa compression illusion, where there is evidence that the illusion influences our
perceptual judgments, but not our perceptually guided actions.
pragmatic representations 27
10
Milner and Goodale 1995, Goodale and Milner 2004, Jacob and Jeannerod 2003,
Jeannerod 1997. The dorsal visual subsystem is (normally) unconscious, and is responsible
for the perceptual guidance of our actions. The ventral visual subsystem, in contrast, is
(normally) conscious, and is responsible for categorization and identification. I do not want
to rely on this distinction in my argument (but see Chapter 3 for a detailed analysis of how
my account relates to the dorsal/ventral distinction).
11
One may wonder about whether by taking imagery to be quasi-perceptual I am siding
with Kosslyn (Kosslyn 1994, Kosslyn et al. 2006), and against Pylyshyn (see especially
pragmatic representations 29
Pylyshyn 2002, 2003) in the grand “imagery debate” (Tye 1991). Note, however, that the
imagery debate is about whether mental imagery is propositional or depictive. Even if one
comes down on the propositional side, as long as one takes perception to be propositional
(as, for example, Siegel 2010b does), this would be consistent with the claim that mental
imagery is quasi-perceptual. In short, the “imagery debate” is orthogonal to the claim that
mental imagery is quasi-perceptual, a (weak) version of which even Pylyshyn acknowledges
(see especially Pylyshyn 2003).
30 between perception and action
12
Maybe the examples I consider in the next two paragraphs could be considered to be
ballistic actions of this kind.
pragmatic representations 31
Final objection: how about complex actions? How about the action of
finishing a book manuscript, for example? This is undoubtedly an
action, but we certainly should not say that the immediate mental
antecedent of this action is a perceptual state. My answer is that it is
problematic even to talk about the immediate mental antecedents of
complex actions like finishing a book manuscript. Finishing a book
manuscript is an action that involves a lot of simpler actions—going
to the office, turning on the computer, etc. All of these simpler actions
have immediate mental antecedents, and, if I am right, they are all
perceptual states, but the composite action of finishing a book manu-
script does not have one single immediate mental antecedent. So the
question about whether the immediate mental antecedent of complex
actions like finishing a book manuscript is a perceptual representation
does not arise.
But if it is true that what mediates between sensory input and motor
output for non-human animals and small children are pragmatic repre-
sentations, then it is also true of the vast majority of the actions of adult
human beings: most of the time, what mediates between our sensory
input and motor output are pragmatic representations only—when we
tie our shoelaces, empty the dishwasher, or just walk down the street
without bumping into too many people.
The performance of some of our actions requires more complex and
sophisticated mental processes, such as beliefs and desires, but these are
only the tip of the iceberg. And, importantly, even the performance of
these more sophisticated actions requires the fine tuning of pragmatic
representations for them to be successful (Israel et al. 1993 and Perry
2001 make a similar point). I return to these questions in Chapter 4.
3
Perception
1
Some anti-representationalists make a more modest claim: that veridical perceptual
states are not representations, while allowing for non-veridical perceptual representations
(see Pautz 2010 for discussion).
perception 35
(d) finding a framework where the two views can coexist as different
explanations for different explanatory projects (Nanay forthcoming f).
But what matters for us here is that regardless of which side of the debate
we take, the action-guiding nature of some of our perceptual states still
needs to be emphasized and explained.
The main claim of this book—that there are special mental states that
mediate between sensory input and motor output—is an important one
in either the representational or the anti-representationalist framework.
If the reader is drawn to representationalism, she can just read ahead:
I will continue to talk about perceptual representations and I will talk
about pragmatic representations as perceptual representations. But if
the reader is drawn to some version of anti-representationalism, this is
not a good reason to stop reading this book.
Many, maybe even most (although probably not all), of the claims
I am making about pragmatic representations can be rephrased in an
anti-representationalist framework. I will spend much of this chapter
specifying what properties are represented in perception: what properties
perceptual representations attribute to objects. The anti-representation-
alist can read this discussion as being about what properties’ perceptual
states “present” or “are sensitive to” or “track.” Those who reject the
claim that perceptual states are representations nonetheless still think
of perceptual states as being in a perceptual relation with objects and
their properties. The question that I frame as “What properties are
represented in perception?” could be framed for these anti-representa-
tionalists as “What properties of perceived objects are we perceptually
related to?”
property, the relata of which are the size of the cup and the grip size
I would be approaching the cup with, which, in turn, depends on the
size of my hand.
It is an important part of the definition of action-properties that they
are properties of the object in front of us—not properties of our hand or
our movement. As we have seen, action-properties are relational prop-
erties with two relata: the object’s property and some property of myself
or my own behavior (in this case, the size of the cup and my own
grip size). But they are attributed to the object—the cup, not my hand.
Attributing a property to the cup—of having a certain size related to my
grip size—is different from attributing a property to my hand of having a
certain grip size related to the cup’s size, in the same way as attributing
the property of being left of the pine tree to the cedar is different from
attributing the property of being right of the cedar to the pine tree. The
property of having a certain grip size related to the size of the cup, a
property attributed to my hand, is not an action-property, as I defined
action-properties. But it is important to emphasize this difference
between properties of this kind and action-properties.
According to Henri Poincaré, “to localize an object simply means to
represent to oneself the movements that would be necessary to reach it”
(Poincaré 1905/1958, p. 47). Poincaré’s proposal is about an important
constituent of all perceptual states, not just the ones that are directly
involved in guiding actions: in order to even localize an object, one needs
“to represent to oneself the movements that would be necessary to reach
it.” But even if we ignore this difference in scope, and limit his claim to
perceptual states that are directly involved in guiding actions, his claim
is very different from mine. Suppose that we weaken his claim in the
following way: in order to perform the action of reaching for something,
we need to “represent to oneself the movements that would be necessary
to reach it.” This is still very different from my claim. Representing
to oneself the movements that would be necessary to grasp the coffee
cup is, as we have seen, different from representing the cup in such a way
that would allow me to grasp it.
A similar proposal is supplied by Kent Bach, who argues that
one of the constituents of the immediate mental antecedents of
action (which he calls “effective representation”) is the representation
“of immediately subsequent behavior, whether or not it occurs” (Bach 1978,
p. 367). Again, the representation of immediately subsequent behavior
perception 41
2
It is not always clear what Poincaré means by the “localization of an object.” One
possible interpretation is that it means what I mean by the attribution of spatial location
properties. If this is so, then his account and mine do not seem to be reconcilable: he
explains the attribution of action-properties by means of the representation of one’s own
movement, and I explain the representation of one’s own movement (if there is such
representation) by means of the attribution of action-properties. One possible argument
on my side (that I won’t explore here) is that if Poincaré takes this route, he has no way
of explaining what makes a goal-directed action goal-directed.
3
There may be some empirical reasons that militate against the Poincaré/Bach view (see
Butterfill and Sinigaglia forthcoming, especially Section 2). These arguments do not apply
in the case of my account.
42 between perception and action
4
Interestingly, Marc Jeannerod seems to be oscillating between these two views: between
“representation of goals for actions” and “visuomotor representations” (Jeannerod 1994,
Section 5, Jeannerod 1997, Jacob and Jeannerod 2003, pp. 202–4).
5
This is not to say that it is always sensitive to the action we are inclined to perform. My
claim does not exclude the possibility that in some cases, we can perceptually represent an
action-property even if we did not previously intend to perform an action (see, for example,
Ellis and Tucker 2000).
perception 43
appropriate grip size, a certain spatial location that allows you to reach in
the appropriate direction, and so on. These are the action-properties
your pragmatic representation represents the knob as having. It does not
represent anything about what effect the turning of the knob would
produce.
But you can, and often do, experience the knob as having much richer
properties: for example, the property of being a facilitator of turning on
the heat. These properties are not action-properties. Remember, action-
properties were properties the representation of which are necessary for
the performance of the action. The property of being a facilitator of
turning on the heat is not a property of this kind.
We may experience the knob as having all kinds of other properties: as
being red, for example. I am interested in a subset of the properties we
experience the knob as having that, like action-properties, cannot be fully
characterized without reference to the agent’s action. I call properties of
this kind “thick action-properties.” Thick action-properties, as we have
seen, can be very different from, and much richer than, action-properties
themselves.
Again, thick action-properties are the properties one consciously
attributes to objects that cannot be fully characterized without reference
to one’s action. And one’s action can characterize these consciously
attributed properties in a variety of ways: one can experience objects as
affording actions, as being an obstacle to one’s action, as being a facilita-
tor of one’s action, as something one can perform the action with, as
something one can perform the action on, as something that one should
perform the action with, and so on. We can be aware of thick action-
properties even if we are not performing any action. If, for example, I see
a tiger running towards me, I will presumably experience it as having
thick action-properties, but I may not perform any action at all.
I said in Chapter 2 that my discussion of pragmatic representation will
focus on basic actions (actions that are not performed by means of the
performance of another action), rather than on non-basic actions
(actions that are performed by means of the performance of another
action). I also said that the pragmatic representation that guides my basic
action is exactly the same as the pragmatic representation that guides
my non-basic action (i.e., the action that is performed by means of
the performance of this basic action). But the associated thick action-
properties can be very different (see Witt et al. 2005, Nanay 2006a).
46 between perception and action
6
Can action-properties proper be dispositional properties? If they can, this would mean
that dispositional properties can be perceptually represented. I am not committed to this
conclusion here, but as I pointed out in Nanay 2011b, the recent mistrust about the
possibility of the perceptual representation of dispositional properties is unfounded.
48 between perception and action
the visual sense modality. The main candidate for the sensory indivi-
duals of audition are sounds. Here is a typical statement from Casey
O’Callaghan:
What do we hear? Sounds are, in the first instance, what we hear. They are
the immediate objects of auditory experience in the following sense: whatever
else we might hear, such as ordinary objects (bells, trumpets) and events (colli-
sions, typing), we hear it in virtue of hearing a sound.
(O’Callaghan 2009, p. 609; cf. 2008b, p. 318)
Although there are some (very few) others who propose, like Heidegger,
that we hear objects, not sounds (one such example is Leddington 2013),
this view is very often dismissed as being as unusual and eccentric as
some of Heidegger’s other views.
This debate is deeply intertwined with the one about the ontology of
sound (Kulvicki 2008, O’Callaghan 2007, Pasnau 1999, Nudds and
O’Callaghan 2009, Casati and Dokic 1994). The big divide in this debate,
to simplify things a little, is between those who take sounds to be
7
I do not mean to suggest that these authors present one unified account of auditory
individuals. There are various differences between these views in a number of respects—for
example, about what they take to be sounds and about whether the source of these sounds is
also something that enters the content of our auditory state. I will leave these differences
aside.
54 between perception and action
individuals (Casati and Dokic 1994, O’Callaghan 2007) and those who
take them to be qualities of individuals (Kulvicki 2008, Pasnau 1999)
(both horns of this dilemma have various versions). If we assume that
sounds are individuals—entities, not the qualities of entities—then
claiming that the sensory individuals of auditions are sounds would
mean that they are not ordinary objects: we attribute properties
to sounds perceptually. But if we assume that sounds are qualities of
individuals, then sounds could be thought of as exactly those properties
that are perceptually attributed to the sensory individuals. So sounds,
according to this account, cannot serve as sensory individuals—they are
just not the kinds of things that can serve as sensory individuals—they
are qualities, not individuals. So those accounts that consider sounds to
be the qualities of individuals could be taken to be a version (and in fact,
a much more sophisticated version than Heidegger’s) of the view that
the sensory individuals of audition are objects. Sounds are the properties
we perceptually attribute to them.
It is important to note that, strictly speaking, the debate is not about
what we hear, but about what we hear “directly” (Matthen 210b, p. 78) or
what we hear “in the first instance” (O’Callaghan 2009, p. 609). The
proponents of the view that auditory individuals are sounds would allow
that we (indirectly, in the second instance) do hear objects. Their pro-
posal is that we only hear objects by virtue of hearing sounds. But this
makes the difference between the two alternative views somewhat blurry:
it brings in thorny issues about “direct” (as opposed to indirect) percep-
tion, for example—a term J. L. Austin famously branded as “a great
favourite among philosophers, but actually one of the less conspicuous
snakes in the linguistic grass” (Austin 1964, p. 15).
Formulating the question about what we hear in terms of sensory
individuals is an attempt at getting rid of the conceptual ambiguity
concerning the direct versus indirect objects of perception. Remember,
sensory individuals are the entities that our perceptual system attributes
properties to. So the general suggestion would be that sensory individuals
are what we perceive “directly.” There may be some other entities that we
perceive “indirectly,” but they may not be the same as sensory individ-
uals.8 As we have seen, some represented properties are attributed
8
Some accounts of auditory individuals may not accept this (maybe Nudds 2001, 2010):
they may insist that both what we perceive directly and what we perceive indirectly are (part
perception 55
of the) sensory individuals. If this is so, then it is even more important to get clear about the
nature of the sensory individuals of audition as I defined them: the entity that properties are
attributed to auditorily.
56 between perception and action
Matthen adds immediately after this quote that “This is more than a
matter of language” (Matthen 2010b, pp. 78–9), but it is difficult to see
what else it is a matter of. Because in our ordinary language linguistic
predicates like “being loud” and “being quiet” attach to the subject of
“sounds” and not of “ordinary objects,” Matthen concludes that our
perception attributes the properties that are expressed by these predi-
cates to sounds and not to ordinary objects. But we have no reason to
suppose that the way our language describes (mainly unconscious)
auditory perception is anywhere close to how auditory perception in
fact works.9
Instead of relying on evidence from intuitions, introspection, or
language, my approach is to use considerations from the connection
between perception and action. If perception at least sometimes guides
our goal-directed actions, it should carve up the perceived scene in a way
9
There are other arguments that I will not analyze here. A couple of examples: Martin
1997, p. 93, appeals to visual demonstratives; Kubovy and Valkenberg 2001, p. 102, appeal
to the figure/ground distinction; and Bregman 1990, p. 2, uses perceptual constancy.
O’Callaghan also appeals to some of these considerations (see especially O’Callaghan 2007).
perception 57
you hear, as the pointing action is not performed on the sound—you are
not pointing at the sound. Second, it also seems odd to say that it
attributes properties to an ordinary object, as you are not aware of any
ordinary object around you—remember, you are sitting in a dark empty
room. The most natural way of describing what is happening here seems
to be that your auditory pragmatic representation attributes properties
to a spatiotemporal region, and it is this property attribution to this
spatiotemporal region that allows you to perform the action of pointing
at this spatiotemporal region. I am not claiming that the “sound” view
and the “ordinary object” view could not be tweaked in such a way that it
can explain this scenario,10 but on the face of it this example seems to be
a reason to re-evaluate the “spatiotemporal region” view of sensory
individuals, at least when it comes to the auditory sense modality.
One may interject that the “spatiotemporal region” view of sensory
individuals can be dismissed on independent grounds. As we have seen,
there are at least four influential and strong arguments against it: (i) it is
too revisionary, (ii) it makes talking about perceptual justification prob-
lematic, (iii) it delivers the wrong phenomenology when it comes to
perceptually tracking an object through time and space, and (iv) it is in
conflict with empirical findings about tracking multiple objects at a
given time.
Argument (i) and argument (iii) have the same structure: the “spatio-
temporal region” view is in conflict with the way we take ourselves to
be perceiving. We take ourselves to be perceiving objects, not places (i),
and we take ourselves to be perceiving motion through space, where
objects “take their properties with them” (iii). But it is unclear what these
considerations have to do with the debate about the nature of sensory
individuals, since sensory individuals are not what we take ourselves to
be perceiving: they are the entities the properties are perceptually attrib-
uted to (consciously or unconsciously). Further, the empirical findings in
(iv) concern the visual sense modality only.11
10
A good bet for the “sound” view would be the appeal to O’Callaghan’s account of what
sounds are, where sounds are concrete particulars located around the sound source.
11
One may take some of the experiments in Bregman’s “auditory scene analysis”
research program to demonstrate findings similar to (iv) in the auditory sense modality
(e.g., Bregman 1990), but the extent of this similarity is not at all clear (see especially Cusack
et al. 2004, Wang and Brown 2006).
60 between perception and action
Humans (and other mammals) have two visual subsystems that use
different regions of the central nervous system: the ventral and dorsal
streams. To put it simply, the ventral stream is responsible for identifi-
cation and recognition, whereas the function of the dorsal stream is the
visual control of our motor actions. In normal circumstances, these two
systems work together, but if one of them is removed or malfunctions,
the other can still function relatively well (see Milner and Goodale 1995,
Goodale and Milner 2004 for an overview).
If the dorsal stream is malfunctioning, the agent can recognize the
objects in front of her, but is incapable of manipulating them or even
localizing them in her egocentric space (especially if the perceived object
falls outside the agent’s fovea). This is called optic ataxia. If the ventral
stream is malfunctioning (a condition called visual agnosia), the agent
can perform actions with objects in front of her relatively well, but she is
incapable of even guessing what these objects are.
The three-dimensional Ebbinghaus illusion I analyzed in the last
chapter is normally explained as a nice demonstration of the dissociation
between the dorsal and ventral visual subsystems in healthy human
adults: the ventral subsystem is fooled by the illusion, but the dorsal
is not. The other examples in which optical illusions deceive the eye but
not the hand (Ponzo, Müller-Lyer, Kanizsa compression, hollow face,
etc.) are analyzed in the same way. Sometimes our ventral visual subsys-
tem attributes a different property to an object from the one the dorsal
subsystem does.
In light of these features of the dorsal visual subsystem, a very
tempting suggestion would be to say that pragmatic representations are
the representations of the dorsal visual subsystem. The dorsal system
guides action, as do pragmatic representations. And the dorsal system
represents the world in such a way that would help us perform actions, as
do pragmatic representations.
The aim of this section is to address the connection between pragmatic
representations and the dorsal visual subsystem. My main goal is to
carefully detach my claims about pragmatic representations from claims
about the dorsal stream. I do not think that pragmatic representations
are the representations of the dorsal stream. Before I give four arguments
in favor of this claim, I want to point out that the question about the
neural implementation of pragmatic representation is a very important
one, and I hope that a lot of empirical work will be done on this in the
64 between perception and action
All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going
to last.
Marcel Proust: À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, 1919.
We can flesh out this example to give us the following argument. The
actions of picking up the pin or brushing away the dust are brought
about without any mediation by beliefs. All that is needed for their
performance is “the fleeting notion of the act.” And “the fleeting notion
of the act” is presumably not a belief. We can and do perform this action
without having any beliefs.
The problem with this argument is that while it may or may not
establish that conscious beliefs are not necessary for action, it remains
silent about the possibility that unconscious beliefs are necessary for
action. The “fleeting notion of the act” could count as a belief, albeit
one that is barely conscious or maybe not conscious at all. James’s
introspective argument (even if we put aside worries about introspective
arguments in general, see for example Schwitzgebel 2008) does not work
against the view that beliefs (conscious or unconscious) are necessary for
action.
Thus, if we want to establish the claim that beliefs are not required for
action, and that the only representational state that is required is prag-
matic representation, then we need to be able to rule out not only
conscious, but also unconscious beliefs.
And here my account of pragmatic representations may help out
James’s argument. As we have seen in Chapter 2, pragmatic representa-
tions are perceptual states: they are not beliefs. So we have found a
class of representational states that are necessary for the performance
of actions and that are not beliefs (either conscious or unconscious):
pragmatic representations.
But we are not yet in the position to conclude that the only represen-
tational states that are required for the performance of actions are
pragmatic representations. We still need to rule out the following possi-
bility. Let’s accept that the representational component of the mental
action 69
state that makes actions actions is not a belief: it is some other repre-
sentation (a pragmatic representation). But it is still a possibility that
each time we perform an action we need to have a belief, in addition
to our pragmatic representation. The general suggestion then would
be this: while pragmatic representation is necessary for action, this
does not rule out that beliefs are also necessary (Matthen 2005 and
forthcoming alludes to this possibility). To rule out this possibility we
would need to show that, at least in some cases, the only representational
states that are required for performing an action are pragmatic
representations.
Let us consider Searle’s famous example: while working at my com-
puter, I suddenly, and without planning to do so, jump up from my desk
and start pacing up and down (Searle 1983, pp. 84–5). Searle argues that
in the case of this action, there is only intention-in-action—neither prior
intentions nor beliefs are needed for the performance of this action.
While this may sound appealing, should we accept this? Couldn’t we
resist this claim with the help of the strategy that jeopardized James’s
argument? In short, couldn’t we just say that we do have beliefs and
desires when we perform this action, but they are unconscious (maybe
because they occur very quickly)?
So the picture would be the following: you are writing at your com-
puter, and very quickly form an unconscious desire to get up and start
pacing up and down, as well as an unconscious belief that this desire can
be satisfied in such and such a manner. You thereby form an uncon-
scious prior intention, which then leads to an unconscious pragmatic
representation that allows you to jump up and start pacing up and down
without bumping into the furniture.
The problem with this picture is that it postulates no less than four
unconscious mental states, and the only justification for this is to salvage
the view according to which beliefs are necessary for action. But, as we
have seen, we need to be careful when postulating unconscious repre-
sentations. We do have very strong reasons for postulating unconscious
pragmatic representations, namely that without such representations we
would not be able to explain our fine-grained movements (for example,
in the three-dimensional Ebbinghaus illusion or in the basketball
example). But we have no reason to postulate unconscious beliefs,
desires, and prior intention in the Searle example, other than to salvage
70 between perception and action
the view according to which beliefs are necessary for action. If we don’t
want to make such an ad-hoc move, then we can conclude that the only
representational state in this example that is required for action is the
pragmatic representation.
So, to return to the James example, the action of picking up the pin or
brushing away the dust could be said to be brought about without any
mediation by beliefs or desires. All that is needed for their performance
are pragmatic representations. The only properties that need to be
attributed for this action to be performed are the action-properties
represented by the agent’s pragmatic representation. And there are
many more examples of such prosaic actions—tying our shoelaces,
brushing our teeth, avoiding bumping into people in a crowded under-
ground station, and so on.
The general rhetoric I will follow is to allow that the belief–desire
model may be the right way of thinking about complex action, but
to also emphasize that most of our actions are very simple and are
brought about by pragmatic representations alone, and that even com-
plex actions could not be performed without having pragmatic repre-
sentations. Even if I do go through all my deliberations about the
umbrella, in the end, in order to take the umbrella, I need to represent
it as having a certain spatial location that allows me to reach for it, a
certain size that allows me to approach it with the right grip size, and as
having a certain weight that allows me to exert the right force when
lifting it. In short, I need to represent it as having action-properties:
I need to have a pragmatic representation. The upshot is that while
pragmatic representations are necessary for bringing about an action,
beliefs and desires are not.
In Section 4.4, I explore the idea that the belief–desire story is insuffi-
cient for complex as well as simple actions.
4.1.1 The cognitive and the conative
We have seen that pragmatic representations are the representational
components of the immediate mental antecedents of action. They
represent all the properties of the object the representation of which
is necessary for the performance of the action. But they do not move
us to act. Following Myles Brand (1984), I called the component of
the immediate mental antecedent of action that moves us to act the
action 71
1
Kent Bach makes a similar (but not identical) distinction between “receptive repre-
sentation” and “effective representation,” which together make up the “executive represen-
tation” that is the immediate mental antecedent of action (Bach 1978, see especially p. 366).
Some contemporary cognitive scientists also often appeal to a similar duality when discuss-
ing motor cognition (see, for example, Haggard 2005a, especially p. 293, and Haggard
2005b).
2
The James quote I used earlier could be interpreted as being an early version of this
distinction. When James says that “I make no express resolve, but the mere perception of
the object and the fleeting notion of the act seem of themselves to bring the latter about”
(James 1890, p. 522), this sounds like he claims that it takes two factors to bring about an
action: “the mere perception of the object” (this would be the cognitive component, the
pragmatic representation) and “the fleeting notion of the act” (which, at least on some
interpretations, would play the role of the conative component).
72 between perception and action
I have never caught myself in the act of willing. It was always the case that I saw
only the thought—for example when I’m lying on one side in bed: now you ought
to turn yourself over. This thought goes marching on in a state of complete
equality with a whole set of other ones: for example, your foot is starting to
feel stiff, the pillow is getting hot, etc. It is still a proper act of reflection; but it
is still far from breaking out into a deed. On the contrary, I confirm with a
certain consternation that, despite these thoughts, I still haven’t turned over. As
I admonish myself that I ought to do so and see that this does not happen,
something akin to depression takes possession of me, albeit a depression that is at
once scornful and resigned. And then, all of a sudden, and always in an
unguarded moment, I turn over. As I do so, the first thing that I am conscious
of is the movement as it is actually being performed, and frequently a memory
that this started out from some part of the body or other, from the feet, for
example, that moved a little, or were unconsciously shifted, from where they had
been lying, and that they then drew all the rest after them.3
This happens to us all the time. The pragmatic representation that allows
us to perform the action is there all along, but the action is just not
coming. This phenomenon is very easy to explain if we make a distinc-
tion between the cognitive and the conative components of the mental
antecedents of our actions: we only move when the conative aspect is also
there. The cognitive aspect—the pragmatic representation—does not, in
itself, lead to any action.
Another important consequence of the cognitive/conative distinction
concerns the psychological disorder called utilization behavior. Utiliza-
tion behavior (Lhermitte 1983, Shallice et al. 1989) is caused by lesions in
the frontal lobe. Patients with utilization behavior tend to perform
actions with the objects they see, regardless of whether they need to
perform this action or whether it is socially acceptable to do so. For
example, they climb into a bed if they see one, even if it is the middle of
the day; if they notice a pair of glasses in front of them, they put them on,
even if they do not normally wear glasses and even if they are already
wearing a pair; they open an umbrella even if it is not raining or if they
are indoors, etc.
One way of analyzing utilization behavior is to posit a mental state in
healthy humans, the function of which is to suppress the automatic
performance of actions (see, for example, Pacherie 2000, 2007, Frith
3
Robert Musil: Diaries. New York: Basic Books, 1999, p. 101. See also Goldie 2004,
pp. 97–8.
action 73
et al. 2000). The neural correlates of this mental state are taken to be
located in the frontal lobe, and that is why, in patients with utilization
behavior whose frontal lobe is damaged, this mental state is missing. And
that is why they have trouble suppressing their actions. According to this
picture of utilization behavior then, in healthy humans the immediate
mental antecedent of action is intrinsically motivating. What can stop it
from being intrinsically motivating is an extra, suppressing, mental state.
The presence of this extra mental state is phylogenetically relatively new,
and it is exactly this that is missing in patients with utilization behavior.
But the distinction between the cognitive and the conative compon-
ents of the immediate mental antecedents of action can help us explain
utilization behavior in a much simpler manner—without positing, in
a more or less ad-hoc manner, an extra mental state. According to
this alternative picture, utilization behavior results from the malfunc-
tioning of the conative component of the immediate mental antecedent
of action. The cognitive component—the pragmatic representation—is
unimpaired: the patients perform these actions with impressive success,
the right grip size, etc. But whenever they form a pragmatic representa-
tion, this automatically triggers the action.
Thus, the difference between healthy humans and patients with util-
ization behavior is not a difference external to the immediate mental
antecedent of action. It is a difference in one of the two components of
the immediate mental antecedents of action: the conative one. And this
difference is not a matter of the impairment of the mechanism that
would suppress actions, but a matter of the oversensitivity of the mech-
anism that would move the agent to act.4
An obvious advantage of this alternative picture is that it does
not force us to posit an additional, suppressing, mental state. Another
4
Note that the proponents of explaining utilization behavior in terms of the lack of a
suppressing mechanism could still endorse the cognitive/conative distinction. They claim
that the immediate mental antecedents of action are intrinsically motivating. I agree.
I further argue that these intrinsically motivating immediate mental antecedents of action
consist of two separate components, the cognitive and the conative ones. And I see no
reason why the proponents of explaining utilization behavior in terms of the lack of a
suppressing mechanism could not make the same distinction. But if they do so, then they
would have all the means to explain what works differently in the case of utilization
behavior patients—namely, the conative component. There is no need to postulate a
further, external, suppressing mental state.
74 between perception and action
5
A notable exception is the recent philosophical literature on the “illusion of free will”:
the sense of agency and conscious will (see, for example, Libet 1985, Wegner 2002, Haggard
and Clark 2003, Pacherie 2007). It is important to acknowledge that experimental philoso-
phers do use empirical data in our intuitions about actions and our way of talking about
them. But even experimental philosophers of action tend to ignore empirical findings about
action itself (as opposed to our intuitions about it).
76 between perception and action
6
One important example comes from Fred Dretske’s work. The original link between
perception and knowledge is at least partly due to the works of Fred Dretske over the
decades (starting with Dretske 1969). Dretske’s recent writings, however, turn the estab-
lished connection between perception and knowledge on its head. He is interested in what
we perceive, and some of the considerations he uses in order to answer this question are
about what we know (see Dretske 2007, 2010). Dretske’s work exemplifies a more general
shift of emphasis in contemporary philosophy of perception.
action 77
very similar to the picture that Brand envisaged for philosophy of action,
but that never in fact materialized.
My aim is to argue that since pragmatic representations are not
normally accessible to introspection, naturalized action theory is the
only plausible option. Philosophy of action should turn towards philoso-
phy of perception for some methodological support (see also Nanay
forthcoming d). As pragmatic representations are both perceptual states
and the representational components of the immediate mental antece-
dents of action, it is the joint job of philosophy of action and philosophy
of perception to characterize them. I will argue that this can only be done
by relying on the empirical sciences.
4.2.1 Naturalism about action theory
I need to be explicit about what I take to be naturalism about action
theory. I have been talking about sensitivity to empirical results, but this
is only part of what naturalism entails. The most important naturalist
slogan since Quine has been the continuity between science and philoso-
phy. As Quine says,
I admit to naturalism and even glory in it. This means banishing the dream of a
first philosophy and pursuing philosophy rather as a part of one’s system of the
world, continuous with the rest of science.
(Quine 1984, pp. 430–1)
Naturalism in the context of philosophy of action can be, and has been,
formulated in a similar manner. Brand, for example, talks about “the
integration of the philosophical with the scientific” (Brand 1984, p. x).
Just what this “continuity” or “integration” is supposed to mean,
however, remains unclear. More specifically, what happens if what science
tells us is in conflict with what folk psychology tells us? Brand clearly
hands the decisive vote to folk psychology. As he says, “Scientific psych-
ology is not free to develop any arbitrary conceptual scheme; it is con-
strained by the conceptual base of folk psychology” (Brand 1984, p. 239).
But that has little to do with naturalism, as Slezak (1987, 1989) points out
(see especially the detailed point-by-point analysis of how Brand’s theory
fails on its own terms in Slezak 1989, pp. 140–1, 161–3). If the only role
science is supposed to play in action theory is to fill in the details of the
pre-existent, unchangeable conceptual framework of folk psychology,
then science is not playing a very interesting role at all—the conceptual
framework of action theory would still be provided by folk psychology.
78 between perception and action
7
I am using here the widely accepted way of referring to natural kinds as the real joints
of nature because it is a convenient rhetorical device, but I have my reservations about the
very concept, for a variety of reasons (see Nanay 2009b, 2010b, 2010h, 2010i, 2011f, 2011g,
2012c, 2012f).
action 79
8
The literature is too large to survey, but an important and philosophically sensitive
example is Jeannerod 1997.
80 between perception and action
9
It could be argued that the other, conative, “moving to act” component of the
immediate mental antecedent of action is also normally inaccessible to introspection,
which would further strengthen the case for a naturalized action theory. See Nanay
forthcoming d.
action 81
4.3 Semi-actions
Some bodily movements are actions. If I decide to eat some yoghurt and
get up from my computer to do so, I perform an action. If my leg moves
82 between perception and action
(a) I decide to eat some yoghurt and get up from my computer to do so.
(b) While typing at my computer, I suddenly and without planning to
do so jump up and start pacing around the room (Searle 1983).
action 83
We have already seen that (a) and (b) are clear examples of action. In
fact, case (a) is an intentional action (thankfully, in this context I can
ignore what that means). Case (b) is also an action, although opinions
differ about whether it is an intentional action. Case (f) is a mere bodily
movement—no action is performed.
The problem is with the remaining three examples that seem to be
somewhere between action and mere bodily movements. And, as we
have seen, if they really are semi-actions then the standard account of
what makes actions actions needs to be revised. One could, of course,
object that these cases are not semi-actions at all: intuitions say that these
really are genuine actions (or that they are mere bodily movements).
Hence, they pose no challenge to the standard picture of what makes
actions actions. I find this way of responding to the challenge too cheap.
The threat semi-actions pose to any account of what makes actions
actions in general, and my own account in particular, needs to be
taken seriously and should not be dismissed on the basis of (unreliable)
intuitions.
It can be demonstrated that while people have no problem categorizing
cases like (a) and (b) as actions, and (f) as non-action, they are torn when
they are asked about cases like (c), (d), and (e) (Nanay forthcoming g).
84 between perception and action
While some people may have the intuition that (c), (d), and (e) are genuine
actions (or that they are mere bodily movements), these people are
the minority: most people characterize these cases as “somewhere in
between”: as semi-actions. Even if your intuition tells you that there
are no semi-actions, nothing follows from this: the intuitions of most
people tell them that there are. Thus, we need to take the idea of semi-
action seriously.
4.3.1 Explaining semi-actions
We have a puzzle then. According to the standard picture, if the bodily
movement is triggered (or maybe accompanied) by a specific kind of
mental state, it is an action. If it is not, it is a mere bodily movement. As
we have seen, this way of formulating the question makes it difficult to
explain the intermediary cases like (c), (d), and (e). The bodily move-
ment is either triggered (or maybe accompanied) by this kind of mental
state or it is not. It is difficult to see what would constitute half-triggering
a bodily movement.
But we can solve this puzzle. In order to do so, we need to go back to
the distinction between the cognitive and the conative components of the
immediate mental antecedents of action. As we have seen, the general
insight is that the immediate mental antecedent of action has two distinct
components: one that represents the world in a certain way, and the
other that moves us to act.
According to Myles Brand, who introduced the distinction (as well
as for others who made similar distinctions, like Bach 1978), both
components are needed for a bodily movement to count as an
action (see especially Brand 1984, p. 45). This would give a dogmatic
answer to our question about the problem cases of action attribution.
For Brand, there is no logical space between actions and mere
bodily movements: there is no logical space for semi-actions. But this
distinction between the two distinct components of the immediate
mental antecedents of action could help us to give the outlines of a
non-dogmatic answer.
As long as we acknowledge that the immediate mental antecedents of
action consist of two distinct components, we can give a coherent
account of the intermediary cases of action attribution. The upshot is
simple: typically, in the case of performing actions both components are
present, and in the case of mere bodily movements neither of them are.
action 85
rather than another. They can also be decisions to marry one person
rather than another, or taking up one job offer rather than another.
How does the belief–desire model describe the decision-making pro-
cess? Here is a somewhat simplified account: the agent has some desires
(or other pro-attitudes, such as preferences) and some background
beliefs, such that deciding between two possible actions is a matter of
comparing the satisfaction of these desires given the background beliefs
in the case of the performance of each action. Most versions of the belief–
desire model allow for this comparison (or for the beliefs/desires
involved in it) to be non-conscious and non-explicit. But they are all
committed to the claim that this comparison is about beliefs and desires.
Both the classic rational choice theory literature and its main alterna-
tive, the prospect theory, use this general framework, despite the various
differences between them. In both cases, the decision is the outcome of a
mental process involving beliefs and desires (this is an explicit assump-
tion of rational choice theory, but it is also an implicit—and sometimes
explicit—premise in prospect theory, see especially Fox and Tversky
1998, Heath and Tversky 1991, Fox and See 2003, Wakker 2004).
The problem with this way of describing decision-making is that there
is a wealth of recent empirical findings about how we actually make
decisions that seem to flatly contradict this picture: our actual decision-
making is sensitive to order effects, to framing effects, and even to such
banal environmental factors as the dirtiness of one’s hands. Maybe the
way we should make decisions is by comparing the satisfaction of our
desires, given our background beliefs in the case of the performance
of each action, but it is unlikely that this is what in fact happens when
we make decisions. In fact, as a consequence of these results, the psycho-
logical and decision science literature moved from questions about
rational decision-making (what makes decision-making rational?) to
questions about our actual decision-making (the locus classicus is
Kahneman and Tversky 1979, see also Bell et al. 1988 and Yaari 1987
on the differences between these two projects). I am engaging with
this latter project: the explanation of how we make decisions. Nothing
I say here counts against the view that rational decision-making is a
property described by the belief–desire model (I will come back to this
distinction below).
A couple of famous examples. It has been shown that the wording of
the task influences decision-making: depending on whether the same
action 89
10
This is by no means a complete list of the empirical findings that are difficult to
explain within the framework of the belief–desire model. Here are four further sets of
findings: (a) Decision-making under risk in non-human animals: there has been a lot of
90 between perception and action
Morsanyi and Handley 2012 and Nanay forthcoming b). But the perva-
siveness of these influences jeopardizes the belief–desire framework as
the general account of decision-making.
It would be tempting to add various extra elements to the existing
belief–desire framework: maybe the general structure of decision-making
is the belief–desire structure, but it’s not the end of the story. Maybe
there are some further (maybe affective) mental states that would also
need to be postulated. So the suggestion would be that while we do make
decisions by comparing the satisfaction conditions of our desires given
various background beliefs, this process is further complicated by some
other factors—maybe a dirtiness-detector state that influences the deci-
sion some way, or a teddy bear-detector state that influences the decision
some other way. While we could of course add these further postulates
thereby saving the general scientific research program of the belief–
desire picture, it is difficult not to notice that these somewhat ad-hoc
postulates—the only purpose of which is to save the research program
from objections—are exactly what Lakatos identified as the mark of a
degenerating research program.
Lakatos distinguished between progressive and degenerative scientific
research programs (Lakatos 1970, 1974). A progressive research
program does not contradict any new data, and makes new predictions
and new explanations. A degenerative one sometimes does contradict
new data, and makes no new predictions and new explanations. If a
degenerative research program contradicts new data, this does not falsify
the research program: there are many ways of modifying the research
program in such a way that the contradiction disappears. These modifi-
cations, however, involve adding extra, ad-hoc, assumptions to the
“core” of the research program, that serve only one purpose: to explain
away the contradiction. These extra assumptions constitute the “protect-
ive belt” of a degenerative research program. The thicker the protective
belt, the more likely it is that a research program is degenerative. The
more new predictions and explanations a research program provides, the
more likely it is that it is progressive (Nanay 2010g, 2011d). Lakatos
argues that it is often worth being loyal to a degenerative research
program for some time (as it may manage to recover), but if there is
an alternative, progressive research program on the horizon, the rational
thing to do is to jump ship and join the progressive one.
92 between perception and action
While this may sound similar to the proposal I was making, there are also
important differences. A salient difference is that Evans’s main concern
96 between perception and action
11
Not all accounts of imagining from the inside fall clearly into one of the two categories
I differentiated above. Gregory Currie’s account, for example, is ambiguous between (1) and
(2). Currie does not talk about imagining from the inside, but about what he calls
action 97
“right” decision, you would need to imagine your future self in that
situation—it is irrelevant how your present self would feel in that
situation, as your present self will never be in it.
But in order to imagine your future self in that situation, you would
need to have some idea about how your future self may be different from
your present self—not a straightforward thing to do. In fact, while you
can imagine what your future self will be like, you have no reliable
information about what it will be like.12 It seems that you need to rely
on imagination at this point yet again. If, however, you imagine your
present self in a future situation, then it is not clear that this imaginative
episode has any real bearing on how your future self would indeed feel in
this future situation. Again, this imaginative episode will not give you
reliable information on which the optimal decision could be based.13
To sum up, there are three points where imagination plays a role in the
decision-making process. You imagine what you imagine to be your
future self, being in a situation that you imagine to be the outcome of
your decision. As none of these three episodes of imagination can be
considered reliable, decision-making is extremely unlikely to yield the
optimal outcome reliably.
Of course, we can, and often do, make the optimal decision, especially
when it is about some decision-problem that concerns the near future, or
one we encounter often—for example, where to go to get a decent cup of
coffee in the neighborhood. But we have no reason to think that our
decisions in general, and especially decisions that really matter to us,
have much of a chance at yielding the optimal outcome.
Note the contrast with the belief–desire model: the scientific research
program that aims to explain decision-making in terms of beliefs and
desires. The belief–desire model takes rational and reliable decision-
making to be the paradigmatic case, and it aims to explain deviations
from this rational norm by appealing to various biases. The picture
I want to replace this scientific research program with proceeds in
the opposite direction. It takes our actual, very unreliable, not at all
12
Further, we have some (rather depressing) empirical evidence that people systematic-
ally ignore the possibility that their future self could be different from their present self (see
Quoidbach et al. 2013).
13
See also the vast literature on affective forecasting on this topic.
action 99
14
In this sense, Evans’s work, which in many respects would constitute an instance of
the scientific research program that I propose to replace the belief–desire model with (as it
explains decision-making in terms of imagination and not of beliefs and desires), does
resemble the belief–desire model more than mine: Evans’s starting point is, as we have seen,
also the way we should make decisions (see especially Evans and Over 2004, p. 12).
100 between perception and action
monopoly it once held in thinking about the mind. We have seen that it is
unlikely that the belief–desire model is the most fruitful way of describing
the mental processes that lead to our simple actions like brushing our
teeth or tying our shoelaces. But, if the argument I presented in this
section is correct, then it may not be a particularly fruitful way of thinking
about the mental processes that lead to even our most sophisticated and
deliberated actions, like deciding between two job offers.
I would like to close with a literary quote that could be considered to
give an account very similar to the one I argued for here—from Marcel
Proust: “Since my parents had told me that, for my first visit to the
theatre, I should have to choose between these two pieces, I would study
exhaustively and in turn the title of one and the title of the other (for
those were all that I knew of either), attempting to snatch from each a
foretaste of the pleasure with that latent in the other title.”15
15
Proust, M. (1928) Swann's Way (trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff). New York: Modern
Library, p. 102.
5
Pragmatic Mental Imagery
1
I said in Chapter 3 that much of what I say in this book is neutral between the
representationalist and the relationalist ways of thinking about perception. I also said that
this is not true of everything I say in this book. The present chapter is the exception—I will
make heavy use of the representationalist framework here when I am characterizing mental
imagery and its relation to perception (especially in the next section). So this is a warning to
the relationalists among the readers: they may want to just skip this chapter.
104 between perception and action
2
It may be worth noting that this way of thinking about the relation between attention
and perceptual content provides a direct explanation for the inattentional blindness phe-
nomenon (see Mack and Rock 1998, Simmons and Chabris 1999).
pragmatic mental imagery 109
before you closed your eyes. It is this perceptual state that guides your
action with a ten-second delay. This may in fact be so in some cases.
But not always. Suppose that after you close your eyes, I tell you
that I have moved the cup towards you by ten centimeters. And then
you reach out with your eyes closed and pick up the cup. What is the
immediate mental antecedent of your action now? It is difficult to see
what else it could be but the mental imagery you form on the basis of
your earlier perceptual state, as well as the verbal information I have
given you. But in order for this mental imagery to allow you to perform
the action, it needs to attribute action-properties to the cup that will
allow you to reach in the right direction, with the right grip size, and with
the right force. The immediate mental antecedent of this action is your
pragmatic mental imagery.
Let us see what kind of mental imagery this pragmatic mental imagery
is. We have seen that mental imagery can be voluntary or involuntary,
conscious or unconscious, and that it may or may not localize the
imagined object in one’s egocentric space. How about pragmatic mental
imagery? In the example I have just given, it is likely to be conscious and
voluntary: you need to make an effort and consciously visualize the cup
in the location where I told you I have shifted it. But there may be other
cases of actions guided by pragmatic mental imagery where this prag-
matic mental imagery is neither voluntary nor conscious. For example,
when you turn on the light in a pitch-dark room that you know so
well that you do not have to deliberately and consciously visualize the
switch—you switch it on almost automatically. In order for you to
be able to perform this action, you need to attribute action-properties
to the light switch, and you are likely to do so by means of unconscious
and involuntary mental imagery.
In short, like pragmatic representation, pragmatic mental imagery can
also be conscious or unconscious. But, like pragmatic representation
(and unlike some other forms of mental imagery), pragmatic mental
imagery also needs to represent the object it attributes action-properties
to in one’s egocentric space. In other words, unlike the case of closing
one’s eyes and visualizing an apple in an “abstract” space, pragmatic
mental imagery attributes action-properties to an object (perceived or
unperceived) that is located in your egocentric space. Otherwise it could
not attribute a spatial location property to this object that would allow
you to perform actions with it.
pragmatic mental imagery 113
selection cares about the success of the actions we perform and that
pragmatic representations are by definition geared towards helping us to
perform actions successfully (see also Nanay 2013). We can make a
parallel argument about pragmatic mental imagery.
It has been widely debated why mental imagery evolved at all. Was it
because it helped us in “mental time travel”—remembering (Patten 1920,
pp. 291–3) and planning (Mithen 2001, p. 33)? Was it because it helped
us in pretense (Byrne 1998, especially p. 117 ff., Mithen 2001, pp. 33–4)?
Or did it allow us to rehearse probable but non-actual situations offline
(Tooby and Cosmides 2005, pp. 60–1)? Or facilitate our creativity (Nettle
2001, p. 141)? Many of these explanations are specific to humans, while
we have evidence that mental imagery is quite widespread among verte-
brates (Horridge et al. 1992, Nieder 2002, Nieder and Wagner 1999,
Regolin and Vallortigara 1995). Even pigeons, for example, have mental
imagery (Rilling and Neiworth 1987, Neiworth 1992, see also Oakley
1985 for a summary).
But attributing action-properties to momentarily invisible objects, or to
those parts of perceived objects that are not visible to us at the moment,
has obvious adaptive value.3 Pragmatic representations help us to localize
entities that are important for our survival in our egocentric space: food,
predators, and potential mates. They are clearly selectively advantageous.
Pragmatic mental imagery does the same thing: it helps us to localize
occluded entities that are important for our survival in our egocentric
space. If we are looking for the evolutionary origins of mental imagery,
pragmatic mental imagery seems to be a very good starting point.
To sum up, pragmatic mental imagery can serve as the immediate
mental antecedent of our actions as much as (but perhaps less efficiently
3
If we accept, as I argued in Nanay 2010c, that we represent the occluded parts of
perceived objects by means of mental imagery, then this becomes even clearer: it is a good
idea to attribute action-properties to the animal I see only the tail of (whether it is predator
or prey). Being able to localize the unseen parts of an animal hiding in a bush is an
extremely survival-enhancing skill. As W. S. Ramachandran writes: “Why do illusory
contours exist and how do they influence subsequent visual processing? In a world that is
so rich in real contours it is hard to see what evolutionary advantage would accrue from the
ability to construct illusory edges. But consider an arboreal primate trying to detect a
leopard seen against the background of dense foliage. To this creature, segmenting the scene
using illusory contours may be of vital importance as an anti-camouflage device. Many
animals have developed elaborate splotchy markings in order to break their outlines [ . . . ],
and the ability to perceive illusory contours may have evolved specifically to defeat this
strategy” (Ramachandran 1987, p. 95).
pragmatic mental imagery 115
5.4 Pretense
Pragmatic representations play a key role in bringing about actions. My
aim in this section is to explore what role pragmatic mental imagery
plays in bringing about pretense actions. When my daughter pretends to
make pizza using her blanket and stuffed animals, this is a pretense
action. One recently widely discussed question is what makes it a pre-
tense action: what are its mental antecedents?
The modern locus classicus is Nichols and Stich (2003). They argue
that pretense actions can be explained if we add a “possible world box” to
the mental apparatus that brings about real (not pretend) actions. We
imagine that x is F. This is what becomes the content of our “possible
world box.” This possible world box then gives rise to a conditional belief
with contents like “if x were F, then I would do A.” And this conditional
belief, together with the desire to behave as if x were F, motivates the
performance of the pretense action to do F. To use the pizza-making
example, in the possible world box we have “I am making pizza,” which
gives rise to the conditional belief “if I were to make pizza, I would
distribute the toppings evenly on the surface,” which in turn, together
with the desire to behave as if I were to make pizza, triggers the pretense
action (of distributing stuffed animals evenly on the blanket).
This way of describing the mental underpinnings of pretense actions
has been criticized for various reasons. According to the most important
alternative model, the pro-attitude that leads to the pretense action is not
116 between perception and action
4
Note that in this case the actual basic action and the pretend basic action are the same:
taking a sip from a glass. But the non-basic actions are different. Hence, as we have seen,
although the pragmatic representation that makes the pretend action possible is the same as
the pragmatic representation that makes the actual action possible, the attributed thick
action-properties can be, and presumably are, very different. So one way of describing the
example is that as a result of the belief-like imagination, we attribute imaginary thick
action-properties.
5
The recent findings that animals, even birds, are capable of episodic memory—
memory a distinctive feature of which is that it is accompanied by mental imagery—
suggests the same. See Clayton et al. 2001 and Emery and Clayton 2004.
120 between perception and action
5.5 Aliefs
Tamar Szabó Gendler argues in a series of influential articles for the
importance of a mental state type she calls “aliefs” (Gendler 2008a,
2008b, 2011, see also McKay and Dennett 2009, Bloom 2010). An alief
is “an innate or habitual propensity to respond to an apparent stimulus
in a particular way” (Gendler 2008a, p. 553). Aliefs, unlike beliefs, are not
under our conscious control. We can, and very often do, have a belief
that x is F and an alief that x is not F at the same time.
Since Gendler introduces the concept of alief by example, I will con-
sider all of the examples she provides:
(a) “A frog laps up the BB that bounces past its tongue” (Gendler
2008a, p. 552).
122 between perception and action
(b) “A puppy bats at the ‘young dog’ in the mirror in front of him”
(Gendler 2008a, p. 552).
(c) “A sports fan watching a televised rerun of a baseball game
loudly encourages her favourite player to remain on second
base” (Gendler 2008a, p. 552).
(d) “A cinema-goer watching a horror film ‘emits a shriek and
clutches desperately at his chair’ ” (Gendler 2008a, p. 553, see
also Gendler 2008b, p. 637).
(e) “A man suspended safely in an iron cage above a cliff trembles
when he surveys the precipice below him” (Gendler 2008a,
p. 553, see also Gendler 2008b, pp. 634–5).
(f) “An avowed anti-racist exhibits differential startle response when
Caucasian and African faces are flashed before her eyes”
(Gendler 2008a, p. 553).
(g) “A person who has set her watch five minutes fast [rushes], even
when she is explicitly aware of the fact that the time is not what
the watch indicates it to be” (Gendler 2008a, p. 555).
(h) “[A person feels] reluctance to eat fudge shaped to look like dog
feces” (Gendler 2008a, pp. 555–6, see also Gendler 2008b,
pp. 635–6).
(i) “[A person feels reluctance] to drink lemonade served in a
sterilized bedpan” (Gendler 2008a, p. 556, see also Gendler
2008b, pp. 635–6).
(j) “[A person feels reluctance] to throw darts at a picture of a loved
one—even when she explicitly acknowledges that the behaviors
are harmless” (Gendler 2008a, p. 556, see also Gendler 2008b,
pp. 635–6).
(k) “[A person feels] hesitant to sign a ‘pact’ giving her soul away to
the devil—even if she is an atheist, and even if the pact says
explicitly at the bottom ‘this is not a real pact with the devil; it is
just a prop in a psychology experiment’ ” (Gendler 2008a, p. 556).
(l) “The Hitchcock expert [has a tendency] to experience suspense
as the shower scene proceeds, even though she has written a book
detailing Psycho frame-by-frame” (Gendler 2008a, p. 556).
(m) “A chef who has recently rearranged his kitchen [has the ten-
dency] to walk towards the old knife drawer to get his cleaver,
even as he talks about how happy he is with the new set-up”
(Gendler 2008a, p. 556).
pragmatic mental imagery 123
(n) “Subjects whose aim is to select a red ball [have the propensity] to
go with frequency (choosing from a bag with 9 red and 91 white
balls) rather than probability (choosing from a bag with 1 red
and 9 white balls)—even when the comparative likelihoods are
prominently displayed” (Gendler 2008a, p. 556).
These are diverse cases, and Gendler is quick to emphasize that aliefs are
not supposed to be part of some kind of final theory of how the mind
works. Her claim is much more modest: if we talk about beliefs and
desires, we also need to talk about aliefs. This is an important contrast
between Gendler’s account and the “associative–propositional evalu-
ation” model (Gawronski and Bodenhausen 2006, Gawronski et al.
2009) with which it shares some important features (see Nagel forth-
coming for a comparison).
Some of the characteristics Gendler attributes to aliefs are strikingly
similar to the characteristics of pragmatic representations. She says that
aliefs are “Associative, automatic, arational, shared by human and non-
human animals, conceptually antecedent to other cognitive attitudes that
the creature may go on to develop, action-generating and affect-laden”
(Gendler 2008a, pp. 557–8).
The aim of this section is not to look for minor disagreements between
Gendler’s account and mine (there are many of these),6 but to argue that
the conceptual framework of pragmatic representations and pragmatic
mental imagery can elucidate many (maybe most) of the examples
of aliefs (but not all of them). Gendler says that she is “fully open to
the possibility that [she has] misdrawn the boundaries of the mental
state that [she is] interested in” (Gendler 2008a, p. 555). I would like to
propose exactly this kind of (slight) redrawing of boundaries in what
follows.
6
Two quick examples. First, Gendler seems to presuppose that while beliefs can and do
change frequently (when updated in the light of further evidence), aliefs are more stable and
less likely to change. As we have seen in Chapter 2 with the basketball example, often the
non-conscious mental state (the pragmatic representation) can change, while every belief/
thought/experience remains the same (there are many other examples; see, for example,
Olson and Fazio 2006). Second, Gendler claims that beliefs are more likely to track truth
(because they respond to rational revision). But, as the three-dimensional Ebbinghaus
experiment I considered in Chapter 2 shows, this is not always the case: our conscious
experiences and beliefs often mislead us, while our unconscious pragmatic representations
can track the real properties of objects (again, there are other examples; see, for example,
Bechara et al. 1997, 2005).
124 between perception and action
can’t help but form a pragmatic mental imagery of the bedpan being full
of urine, and this is what makes us hesitate to drink it. Remember that we
can form pragmatic mental imagery of an object that we do perceive—
when we attribute imaginary action-properties to the perceived object.
And this is what happens here. We see the bedpan full of lemonade, but
can’t help forming the pragmatic mental imagery of the bedpan full of
urine (presumably as a result of simple associative perceptual learning).
Similarly, when we see the fudge shaped to look like dog feces that we are
supposed to eat, this leads to the pragmatic mental imagery of dog feces.
Here, what makes the action of eating the fudge not particularly
appealing is not as much the attribution of action-properties, but of the
emotionally colored thick action-properties we experience the imagined
dog feces as having. But, as we have seen, pragmatic mental imagery,
if conscious, is normally accompanied by the awareness of a rich set of
thick action-properties.
Example (f) can be analyzed in a similar manner. The avowed anti-
racist forms different pragmatic mental imagery in response to seeing an
image of a Caucasian and an African face—the action-properties, and
especially the thick action-properties, attributed by this pragmatic
mental imagery are different. And this explains the difference in her
startling. This way of analyzing the example would also explain the
following experimental finding: if the task is to detect the presence or
absence of dots on a photo of a face, the automatic stereotype activation
effect when seeing minority faces is eliminated (Macrae et al. 1997). If the
automatic stereotype activation effect has to do with pragmatic mental
imagery, then a motor task that involves pragmatic representation
should be expected to diminish this effect.
The real question is, of course, why does she form this pragmatic
mental imagery on the basis of seeing the two different faces? And here
some recent empirical findings point towards perceptual learning (Olson
and Fazio 2006), which supports my proposal that what is responsible
for this difference in the startling reaction is something perceptual/quasi-
perceptual: pragmatic mental imagery.
How about case (j), which is based on studies in Rozin et al. (1986)?
Subjects are reluctant to throw darts at the picture of a loved one, and if
they do throw darts they are more likely to miss than if they are throwing
darts at a picture of someone they do not know. There are two ways
of analyzing this, depending on one’s views on picture perception. One
pragmatic mental imagery 127
7
It is important to note that with this claim one does not necessarily side with
Waltonian accounts of depiction, according to which when we see the picture of X we
imagine our experience of the picture to be of X (Walton 1990, 2002, Maynard 2012). But if
one is tempted by the Waltonian account, this may be a natural way of extending that
account to these cases. My own account of depiction is very different from Walton’s (see
Nanay 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010f, 2011c).
8
Again, in terms of theories of depiction, this way of analyzing the dart-throwing
example does not necessarily lead to an account of picture perception as “seeing-through.”
While some people have argued that the perception of at least some pictures is like seeing
through a mirror (Lopes 2003), we do not have to endorse this in order to analyze the dart-
throwing scenario in terms of pragmatic representations.
128 between perception and action
9
More on what I mean by this in Chapter 6.
pragmatic mental imagery 129
stretch my explanatory scheme to cover these cases. But the aim of this
chapter was not to explain all cases of aliefs in terms of pragmatic
representation and pragmatic mental imagery, but to show that many
examples that motivated Gendler to posit aliefs can be explained if we
appeal to mental states that we have independent reasons to posit:
pragmatic representations and pragmatic mental imagery.
Gendler briefly discusses the possibility of explaining alief in terms
of imagination (Gendler 2008a, pp. 567–8), but she concludes that
while, at least in some cases, “imagination gives rise to behavior via
alief ” (Gendler 2008a, p. 568), aliefs themselves cannot and should not
be identified with imagination. My attempt was to use a very specific
kind of imagination, mental imagery, and even a very specific kind of
mental imagery, pragmatic mental imagery, in order to explain at least
some of the examples Gendler explains in terms of aliefs.
Gendler explicitly states that alief is not a “fundamental mental
category, one that will be part of our ‘final theory’ of how the mind
makes sense of the world” (Gendler 2008a, p. 555). In some ways, I take
myself to be continuing Gendler’s project. She identified a crucial
phenomenon, and I am trying to explain it in terms of pragmatic
representations and pragmatic mental imagery: mental states that we
have independent reasons to posit.
6
Vicarious Perception
Virginie’s face became her own, Virginie’s dress clothed her, Vir-
ginie’s heart was beating in her breast.
Gustave Flaubert, Un Coeur Simple, 1876.
states. Defenders of the idea of theory of mind could say that I attribute
the mental (or maybe perceptual) state to you that you are not aware of
the threat, and that I compare this mental state (attributed to you) with
my own mental state of being aware of the threat, and that this compari-
son triggers my reaction. But this explanatory scheme presupposes
extremely complex mental processes in order to explain a very simple
and instinctive reaction.
My explanation is simpler: our visceral “Oh my god!” or “Watch out!”
reaction is triggered by vicarious perception: we see the object as having
other-centered thick action-properties, and highly emotionally charged
ones—no attribution of mental states is needed to explain this.
Theory of mind entails some kind of representation or understanding
of another person’s mental state. Vicarious perception only presupposes
a perceptual state—no complex representation of representation is
required. In short, vicarious perception is very different from, and
much simpler than, theory of mind.
To sum up, vicarious perception is the perceptual representation of an
object as having some properties, and some of these properties are that it
affords an action to another agent. This is not the attribution of a mental
state to another agent, but the attribution of a property to an object—
very different kinds of attribution indeed.
But the deeper question is whether seeing an object as affording an
action to another agent presupposes the attribution of a mental state
to another agent. My answer is to concede that sometimes it does:
sometimes our vicarious perception presupposes theory of mind. But,
crucially, this is not always the case. There are instances of vicarious
perception (the tiger example above is one) that do not presuppose theory
of mind. To be sure, vicarious perception does presuppose the attribution
of agency. There is no vicarious perception if I see the tiger attacking a
trashcan: I don’t see the tiger as affording an action to the trashcan. But it
doesn’t presuppose the attribution of mental states to an agent. Vicarious
perception is a way of engaging with someone else. This capacity, like
theory of mind, is made possible by our much simpler capacity to identify
some entities, but not others, as potential agents (see, for example, Scholl
and Tremoulet 2000). But this does not make vicarious perception itself
entail the representation of someone else’s mental state.
We can, of course, have both. Theory of mind—the attribution of a
mental state to someone else—can and often does influence our vicarious
138 between perception and action
1
I do not mean to suggest that all recent accounts of social cognition belong to one of
these three views (theory of mind, direct perception, mirror neurons). First, some have tried
to combine the advantages of (a version of) the theory of mind approach and the mirror
neuron approach (see, for example, Goldman 2006). Second, there are views that do not
naturally fall under any of these three labels, for example the “minimal theory of mind”
approach of Apperly and Butterfill 2009 and Butterfill and Apperly forthcoming.
140 between perception and action
2
There are also debates about the theory of mind capacities of other non-human
animals, such as corvids; see, for example, Emery and Clayton 2004.
vicarious perception 143
2003, 2004, Povinelli and Eddy 1996, Penn and Povinelli 2007, Reaux
et al. 1999, see also Bulloch et al. 2008). The most decisive set of experi-
ments is the following: the chimpanzee can ask for food from two
experimenters, only one of whom seems to be able to see (say, because
the other one has a bucket on her head). It turns out that chimpanzees
ask for food from the two experimenters, regardless of which one
appears to be a perceiver. These experiments seem to demonstrate that
chimpanzees do not attribute even perceptual states to others. If they
did, they would show a preference for asking for food from those
agents who seem to be able to see them. But they do not show any
such preference.
Hence, even the most plausible candidate for theory of mind—namely,
the attribution of perceptual states to others—lacks conclusive support.
We have reached an impasse (see also Sterelny 2003).
And here is the point where the concept of vicarious perception can be
applied successfully. The Hare et al. experiments can be appropriately
described as instances of vicarious perception. The subordinate sees the
food item as affording the action of eating to the dominant, and she sees
the other food item as not affording the action of eating to the dominant.
She attributes very different other-centered—that is, dominant chimp-
centered—action-properties to the two objects. And she, understandably,
goes for the one that does not afford eating to the dominant chimp.
Note that many, maybe even most, experimental findings in favor of
the existence of theory of mind in non-human primates work on the very
same model, starting with Premack and Woodruff ’s original ones: the
chimp in that experiment sees objects (a key, a tap, a switch, a box) as
affording actions (opening the cage, rinsing the dirty floor, lighting the
unlighted heater, reaching the bananas) to another agent (Premack and
Woodruff 1978).
And the same is true of the alleged anecdotal evidence for theory of
mind in non-human primates. One of the earliest such anecdotes is the
following (Goodall 1971): a young chimpanzee noticed a piece of food on
a tree, but did not get it and did not even look at it so long as there were
other chimps around, but when they left she immediately jumped up and
grabbed it (see also Byrne and Whiten 1988 and de Waal 1982 for similar
anecdotes).
The Povinelli experiments are somewhat more difficult to handle. An
important contrast here is the following set of experiments on rhesus
144 between perception and action
3
The Flombaum and Santos experiment is about rhesus monkeys and not chimpanzees,
but as rhesus monkeys are widely held to be less capable of theory of mind than chimpan-
zees (see Cheney and Seyfarth 1990, Cheney et al. 1995), this asymmetry can be ignored.
vicarious perception 145
4
Note that the claim is that the subject does not need to consider what action objects
afford to the other agent. But the subject can consider this, which may be responsible for the
discrepancies in replicating the original Povinelli experiments, see Bulloch et al. 2008.
146 between perception and action
perceives it as affording a much more boring action (of pushing the level
with no apparent result). And when the observer quail is subsequently
allowed to operate the lever, it perceives it as affording the action it has
previously seen it as affording to the other quail. That is why those
observer quails that have seen the other quail getting rewards are more
likely to imitate its behavior.
6.3.2 Vicarious perception and cognitive development
One big debate in the theory of mind literature concerns developmental
psychology: at what age do children acquire the ability to attribute
mental states to others? The initial response was age 4 (Wimmer and
Perner 1983, see also Wellman et al. 2001), which quickly went down to 2
(O’Neill 1996, Southgate et al. 2007), and to 1.5 years (Meltzoff 1995).
More recently, there are more controversial proposals for evidence of
social cognition in 15-month-olds (Onishi and Baillargeon 2005), 13.5-
month-olds (Song et al. 2005), 13-month-olds (Surian et al. 2007), 12-
month-olds (Gergely et al. 1995, Kuhlmeier et al. 2003, Csibra et al.
2003), 10-month-olds (Hamlin et al. 2007), 9-month olds (Csibra et al.
1999), and even 6.5-month-olds (Kamewari et al. 2005, Csibra 2008)—to
mention only a few important milestones.5 None of these proposals are
uncontroversial—in each case there are suggestions for explanations of
the displayed behavior without any reference to anything reminiscent of
theory of mind (some important examples can be found in Perner and
Ruffman 2005, Premack and Premack 1997).
It is important that not all of these experimenters are taking them-
selves to establish that infants attribute beliefs to others (although many
do; see, for example, Surian et al. 2007): they loosen the criterion for
theory of mind in a number of ways. Some talk of the attribution of goals
(Csibra et al. 1999), of “perspective taking” (Tversky and Hard 2009), of
the attribution of dispositions to act in a certain way (Hamlin et al. 2007,
Song et al. 2005) or of “taking the intentional stance” (Gergely et al.
1995). It is not entirely clear how these proposals relate to one another
and to the original question of the development of theory of mind.
5
This list is by no means exhaustive—there are dozens of important studies about infant
theory of mind published every year. Also, the age of 6 months is not the earliest age where
the emergence of (something like) theory of mind is postulated. It has also been argued
recently that it develops as early as at 3 months (see Luo 2011).
148 between perception and action
A striking feature of these experiments is that they all seem to follow the
same pattern, which is in fact the pattern of vicarious perception: the
infant perceives an object as affording an action to another agent. More
specifically, the infant perceives the toy truck (a), the obstacle or lack
thereof (b), (d), and the triangle or the square (c) as affording the action
of sliding (a), of going around it (b), (d), and of helping or hindering (c)
to the actor (a), the circle (b), (c), and the box (d).
In other words, experimental findings (a)–(d) can be explained with-
out any reference to the attribution of any mental state (be it belief,
disposition, or goal). They can be explained with the help of a simple
perceptual process: vicarious perception. The evidence for social cogni-
tion in infants younger than 1 year is in fact evidence for vicarious
perception in these infants. And this evidence tells us that vicarious
perception emerges between months 6 and 9.
Take (c) as an example. The data is that the infants show preference
for the triangle that helps the circle up the slope over the square that is
trying to prevent the circle from climbing up the slope. We can explain
this by describing the infant as having a non-perceptual mental state of
attributing a disposition or maybe even virtue/vice to the triangle and
the square. But we also have a much simpler explanatory scheme, with
reference to the infant’s perceptual states alone: the infant does not attribute
any mental state (or disposition) to anyone, she merely perceives the
triangle as affording a certain action to the circle, whereas she perceives
the square as affording another action to the circle (these geometrical figures
are all taken to be agents—see Scholl and Tremoullet 2000). On the basis of
these vicarious perceptual states, she forms an understandable preference
for the triangle. Examples (a), (b), and (d) can be analyzed in the same way.
To sum up, the experiments for early social cognition in developmen-
tal psychology say little about the attribution of mental states. They do,
however, give us a firm understanding of the emergence of vicarious
perception in infancy.
6.3.3 Vicarious perception in adult humans
The third big debate about the concept of theory of mind is not about
preverbal infants or non-human primates, but about adult human
beings. We attribute beliefs and desires to each other all the time. The
question is: how do we do it? What are the mental processes that make
the cognitive engagement of adult humans with others possible?
150 between perception and action
But this is not the only interpretation. It has also been suggested that
the reason for the Social Simon Effect is that the other agent provides a
spatial reference frame—the other person’s mind does not play any role
in creating the effect, she is relevant only for helping us to localize the
stimulus and the response in space (Guagnanoa et al. 2010, Dolk et al.
2011). On this interpretation, the Social Simon Effect is not social at all—
it does not involve any form of social cognition.
Neither of these interpretations is unproblematic. The problem
with the first, “action co-representation,” interpretation is that the Social
Simon Effect is also present when the subject is a patient with autism
spectrum disorder (Sebanz et al. 2005b). But it is widely held that autism
can (at least partly) be explained in terms of the subjects’ deficiency of
“theory of mind” (Baron-Cohen 1995, Senju et al. 2009). But then how is
it possible that they are capable of forming “action co-representations”
(see also Humphreys and Bedford 2011)? Also, it turns out that the
further away the agents sit from each other, the weaker the effect gets
(Guagnanoa et al. 2010). It is not at all clear why this would make a
difference if the effect is to be explained by a version of “theory of mind.”
The problem with the second, “spatial reference frame,” interpretation
is that the Social Simon Effect depends on the actor’s bad mood
(Kuhbandner et al. 2010), and, importantly, her negative relationship
to the other actor (Hommel et al. 2009). Further, if the agent believes
that the co-actor is a computer, the effect disappears (Tsai et al. 2008).
These findings indicate that there must be something “social” in the
Social Simon Effect.
The concept of vicarious perception can help us to resolve this debate.
The Social Simon Effect can be interpreted as a manifestation not of
“theory of mind,” but of vicarious perception. The effect is present
because the actor is aware of the action the stimulus on the left-hand
side affords to her co-actor. The actor sees the stimulus on the left-hand
side as affording an action not to herself, but to her co-actor. The actor
attributes other-centered—that is, co-actor-centered—action-properties
to the stimulus.
This does not entail attributing any mental states to the co-actor—
which explains why the effect is still present in the case of autism
spectrum disorder patients. But it does involve social cognition: namely,
vicarious perception—which explains why the effect is sensitive to the
agent’s mood, to the relationship between the agents, and to whether the
vicarious perception 153
with others—I don’t think this would be a feasible task. I do not aim to
give an account of empathy or of sympathy either—I am not sure that
either of these concepts refer to emotional natural kinds. I will use the
term “vicarious emotional engagement” to refer to the form of emotional
engagement with others in which we perceive entities around another
person as emotionally relevant to that person.
6.4.1 Vicarious emotional engagement
When I look at a cockroach crawling up my leg, I feel disgust. When
I look at the neighbor’s huge pit bull running towards me, I am afraid.
One aspect of what goes on in my mind during these moments is that
I represent the cockroach as disgusting or the dog as scary. In general,
when we have an emotion directed at an object, there are some properties
that we need to represent this object as having in order to have this
emotion. I call these properties “emotional-relevance properties.”
The term “emotional-relevance property” is a technical term: it is a
convenient label to use for properties like being scary (in the case of the
emotion of fear) or being disgusting (in the case of the emotion of
disgust). When we have an emotion directed at an object (say, when
we are disgusted by a cockroach), we may represent it as having all
kinds of properties: shape, size, color, etc. But we can have this emotion
without representing this object as having some of these properties. We
could not have the emotion of being disgusted by x without representing
it as having the property of being disgusting: without representing it as
having an emotional-relevance property.
It is important to emphasize that this is not in any way a new account
of emotions, nor does this make us side with one theory of emotion or
another. This is just a way of talking about emotions that allows us to
focus on the attributed properties.
Importantly, this way of talking about emotions does not imply that all
emotions are necessarily representational. There is a big debate in the
philosophy of emotion literature about whether every emotion is neces-
sarily directed at certain events or entities: whether they are necessarily
about something (which would provide a contrast with moods, since
moods are not directed at certain events in the same way). There is also
a debate about whether the representational properties fully capture
what an emotion is (or maybe emotions need to (also) have some non-
representational aspect) (see Hume 1739/1978, James 1884, Oatley and
vicarious perception 155
let us suppose, you have no problem with rats. But you know that
Bill finds them disgusting and, as a result, you represent it as emotionally
relevant to him. Vicarious emotional engagement is a very simple, vis-
ceral, quasi-automatic, and, arguably, perceptual process. This, I claim, is
a thus far underrated way of engaging with others emotionally.
Take another example: you go to a party with your friend, Fred, who
has just had a messy divorce from his wife, Jane. Entering the party first,
you see Jane there kissing another man. Again, what happens here is that
you represent the event of Jane kissing another man as emotionally
relevant, not to yourself, but to Fred. You attribute Fred-centered and
not self-centered emotional-relevance properties to this event. That is,
you don’t represent this event as emotionally relevant to yourself—
you’ve never had any strong feelings for or against Jane. But you know
that Fred cares about her a great deal and, as a result, you represent this
event as emotionally relevant to him. This example illustrates that one’s
vicarious emotional engagement can be (but doesn’t have to be) sensitive
to one’s higher-order thoughts and beliefs, such as my beliefs about Fred
and Jane’s past (see de Sousa 1987).
Note the structural similarity with vicarious perception. Vicarious
perception is the perceptual attribution of other-centered thick action-
properties to an object. Vicarious emotional engagement is the percep-
tual attribution of other-centered emotional-relevance properties to an
object. Further, vicarious emotional engagement does not entail the
attribution of an emotional state to the other agent: neither Bill nor
Fred attributes emotional-relevance properties. Fred is still coming up
the stairs and hasn’t seen what I have seen. And Bill is not aware of the
rat. So my vicarious emotional engagement with them does not entail the
attribution of an emotional state to them (if it did, this would be a
misattribution). Vicarious emotional engagement can be accompanied,
and as a result colored, by the attribution of emotional states (for
example, by my attribution of Fred’s general emotional attitude towards
Jane), but it does not have to be. Like vicarious perception, vicarious
emotional engagement is not necessarily accompanied by the attribution
of mental (in this case, emotional) states.
But the relation between vicarious perception and vicarious emotional
engagement is more than a mere structural parallel. As we have seen,
vicarious perception, like any attribution of thick action-properties, can
be a highly emotional affair (and it can also be influenced by our
vicarious perception 157
6
For the distinction between basic and non-basic emotions, see Damasio 1994, Griffiths
1997, 2004, but see also Ortony and Turner 1990 and Clark 2010 for criticisms.
158 between perception and action
that goes beyond their needs” (Campbell 2011, p. 282). What then
made us acquire the capacity to represent particulars in a way that goes
beyond our needs?
The very question of the origins of our objective representations
is discussed recently at great length by Tyler Burge (Burge 2010). He
criticizes the most influential contemporary accounts of what the cap-
acity for objective representation presupposes (by Evans, Strawson,
Quine and Davidson) for over-intellectualizing the mind. My approach
is clearly similar to Burge’s in this respect, but my positive account is very
different from his.7
To use the terminology of this book, the question can be summarized
in the following manner. Animals attribute action-properties to objects.
This capacity makes a lot of evolutionary sense: the attribution of action-
properties is by definition a survival-enhancing capacity. But why did we
acquire the ability to attribute properties that are not action-properties?
Why did we acquire representations that are detached not from sense
perception, but from action?
My very sketchy and tentative answer is that we did so by means of
the mediation of vicarious perception. Vicarious perception is not
an “objective” or “detached” representation. It still consists of the attribu-
tion of action-properties. However, these action-properties are not self-
centered, but other-centered. Vicarious perception still does not represent
the way the world is per se. It represents how the world is for another
person. But, and this is the crucial step, by representing both how the
world is for us (pragmatic representation) and how the world is for
someone else (vicarious perception), we are in the position to become
aware of the difference between the other agent’s perspective and our
own, which in turn can lead to our representing the world as it is, and not
as seen from one fixed perspective or another: as objective states of affairs.
This way of bringing in the social dimensions to explain the
origins of objective, detached representations is, of course, not new. Its
main proponent within philosophy was Donald Davidson (the same idea
has become very influential in cognitive science; see, for example,
7
Burge argues that perception itself can give us objective representations, which is
certainly true under some interpretations of the concept of objectivity, but it is not clear
to me that it is also true under the interpretation that I have in mind here—in the sense of
being detached from the agent’s actions.
vicarious perception 167
I agree with the first half of this quote: our sense of objectivity is the
consequence of a sort of triangulation, and one that requires two crea-
tures. One perceives the object as affording an action to the other. This
already allows for the awareness of the difference between the other
agent’s perspective and one’s own, which is a good starting point for
representing the world not as seen from one fixed perspective or another,
but as things are, regardless of perspective.
But according to my account, this form of triangulation does not
require language (this is an idea Davidson himself briefly flirted with at
the end of his life (personal communication), from Spring 2000 to Spring
2003, see also Davidson 2001, p. 128). In fact, all it requires is a percep-
tual process of seeing something as affording an action to someone else.
Thus, here is the (again, sketchy and tentative) picture that I take to be
different both from Davidson’s and from Burge’s. First, we all had only
self-centered pragmatic representations. Then some of us (not only
humans) acquired the capacity of forming other-centered vicarious
perception. And while this mental process is still nothing more than
the attribution of action-properties, it can pave the way towards the
acquisition of the capacity to form decentered (detached, objective)
representations. Importantly, these “bird eye view” (Tomasello et al.
2005) representations or “naked intentions” (Jeannerod and Pacherie
2004) are later developments than vicarious perception. Nonetheless,
vicarious perception may have been the stepping stone for the emergence
of objective thought.
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Index